A hyperlink is a word, phrase, or image on a computer screen that you can click to instantly jump to another location. When you click a hyperlink on a website, it might take you to a different page, open a video, download a file, or jump to another part of the same document.

You can usually spot hyperlinks because they often appear as blue, underlined text on websites, though they can be styled to look different. When you move your mouse cursor over a hyperlink, it typically changes from an arrow to a pointing hand, signaling that you can click.

Before hyperlinks, finding information meant flipping through books or searching through files one by one. Hyperlinks changed everything by letting you move instantly from one piece of information to related information anywhere in the world.

People also use hyperlink as a verb: you might hyperlink a word in your digital presentation to connect it to a helpful website. The invention of the hyperlink made the modern internet possible, transforming computers from isolated machines into an interconnected web of knowledge where any piece of information is just a click away.